There’s something about the South that draws vampires. Maybe it’s just the gothic nature of the place or perhaps its mish-mash of cultures verberating through its cities. Whatever it is, the region is rife with nosferatu — everything from Anne… Continue Reading →

There’s something about the South that draws vampires. Maybe it’s just the gothic nature of the place or perhaps its mish-mash of cultures verberating through its cities. Whatever it is, the region is rife with nosferatu — everything from Anne Rice’s Lestat to Charlaine Harris’ Bill Compton.

With that in mind, it made sense for Sucker Punch to create a standalone downloadable title for the inFamous franchise based on creatures of the night. It’s a natural fit given the location, which is inspired by New Orleans, and besides, zombie games have been done to, uh, death.

AN UNCONVENTIONAL STORY: InFamous: Festival of Blood, which costs $9.99, isn’t part of the official canon. It’s a tale that Zeke is spinning while he’s trying to pick up a lady at the bar. As usual, Cole is at the center of it. He’s been bitten by a vampire named Bloody Mary and has one night to kill her before he becomes her undead slave forever.

Sucker Punch’s animation director Billy Harper said that Festival of Blood allows players to explore Cole’s dark side, something that many players didn’t do in inFamous 2. (BTW, the evil path had the better ending.)

Being a vampire, Cole has free rein to kill anyone he wants or wreck the stands at Pyre Night, the fictional festival that’s part of the plot. No matter what he does, he’ll have to hurt bystanders. He needs to suck people’s blood to fuel his vampiric powers.

NEW ABILITIES POWERED BY BLOOD: One of the more useful ones is swarm maneuver that lets him turn into a flock of bats and fly around the New Marais. It offers a new way to play. In addition, he has a few new weapons, including an amp that lets him dust several new nosferatu types. Combine swarm and the new amp and Cole can do things like fly in the air, materialize and stab foes in the heart. Using his new stake amp, he’ll have to fight the undead with electricity and melee moves and then dust them while they’re down. If he doesn’t, they just get right back up again.

As for the city of New Marais, all of it is open to players but a majority of the campaign takes place in St. Ignatius and Ascension Parish areas. That’s also where players will find most of the Pyre Night festivities and environmental changes to the game.

In addition to the superficial changes, there are also new areas to explore such as the Catacombs. It’s there that players will get use of Cole’s vampire vision ability. It allows him to see glyphs that are normally invisible to hunmans. They point out hidden doors and other areas. Some spots even unlock the back story behind Bloody Mary who was burned alive by a mob.

LOOKING AT THE WORLD IN A DIFFERENT WAY: When it comes to combat, the vampire vision helps them track down other nosferatu who may be fleeing from him or hiding among the populace. Using the power creates a nice effect where Cole can see the pumping hearts and veins of the living and spot the undead by the lack of warm blood in their bodies.

He’ll need this power and others as he progresses through the game. At the beginning, he’s not powerful enough to overcome Bloody Mary’s hold on him. But as he advances, he’ll get certain items that will enable him to confront her. He’ll also face increasingly powerful villains. The nosferatu he encounters are from several epochs and have the weapons and abilities that go with their designated age in time.

Some of them use primitive arms while more powerful foes like the First Borns are giant manbats that can fly, swoop down and put the hurt on Cole. There’s a lot of new content that goes with this horror-themed title that’s just right for the season. Think of it as a Halloween special for one of the more popular games on the PlayStation 3 this year.

I always associate inFamous with GDC. At GDC 2009, I first played the game and interviewed Sucker Punch co-founder Brian Fleming. Now two years later, I’m playing the sequel and getting an overview of its new feature — user-generated levels.… Continue Reading →

I always associate inFamous with GDC. At GDC 2009, I first played the game and interviewed Sucker Punch co-founder Brian Fleming. Now two years later, I’m playing the sequel and getting an overview of its new feature — user-generated levels. It’s an interesting evolution for a game that’s prided itself on being a super hero title built from the ground up as a video game.

When I first played inFamous 2, what struck me the most were the visuals. As much as I liked the first game, it was drab, post-apocalyptic and morose. Suffice to say, it was overwhelmingly dark. On the other hand, the sequel is the opposite. With architecture inspired by New Orleans, the new locale, New Marais, is bright, lustrous and distinct with residents milling about the street and structures that echo the French Quarter.

Along with the new setting, Cole MacGrath sports some new moves and a weapon called the Amp. The protagonist wields it like a baseball bat, and it seems like it allows him to perform little flourishes in combat. After pressing the square button a few times, a meter toward the left charges up and when it hits the limit, players can press the triangle button to perform a slow-motion power move.

It also seems as though Cole is less alone in this campaign. In the bad and good missions I sampled, Cole was accompanied by either cops or a new ally named Nix. In the good mission, Zeke asks Cole to help out some officers captured by an evil militia. If he frees them, the cops help him on his attack on a run-down plantation. The bad mission involves Nix, another superhuman who is imbued with the power of fire. She urges Cole to capture a train and ram it through the front gates of the site.

Although it feels good to help others, it’s more entertaining to beat up anyone who opposes you, capture a street car and shooting electricity into it so that it flies down the tracks and into a militia base. It’s an explosive entrance that leave a huge chunk of enemies dead. Better yet in the bad mission, you have Nix by your side, and together you can more quickly eliminate the militia. Nix, which was AI-controlled, can grab enemies with her fire power and Cole can finish them off with a vicious swing of the Amp. During other moments, she’ll evaporate into thin air and reappear elsewhere taking out foes. Sucker Punch says she’s not necessarily evil, but more hedonistic and chaotic meanwhile Cole’s old friend Zeke is the lawful good person.

As you pound bad guys and choose whether to restrain them or bioleach their energy, players will discover they have a few other powers. There’s now an Ionic Tornado that players can whip out by pressing the down arrow on the D-pad. Also the environments seem more destructable than before with exploding gas tanks and wooden debris.

No matter which side you play though, both missions end the same way. Cole is trying to get to the plantation because a character named Kuo is there, and she is a superhuman like he is. Beating the demo unlocks an interesting cut-scene that shows Cole may have awakened something else during his rescue attempt.

That demo was fine and good, but the bigger news from inFamous 2 was the unexpected announcement of user-generated content. At first, I thought it was odd addition. What can players really do with that in an open-world, super-hero game. But seeing it in action, I have to admit the concept looked like it held some value.

The user-generated content works similarly to LittleBigPlanet with a thermometer that marks how much stuff you can add to a scenario. Meanwhile, actual mission building is done in enclosed parts of the New Maris. That means the more you play through inFamous 2, the more unique areas you can access for your levels.

As for mission design, it can be anything from a simple rooftop race where Cole has to glide across power lines and go through circles to siege-type missions, where he has to defend himself from an army of militiamen. There’s even an surreal target practice mode, where Cole has to shoot targets that float eerily in space.

I asked one of the developers to make me a level, and he did so in a few minutes. He asked what I wanted and I said give me an explosion. I told him I didn’t want just any blast. I wanted full-scale Michael Bay-Jerry Bruckheimer spectacle, and he responded by changing the gravity for enemies and putting some gas cans, bombs and propane tanks next to each other. Then he fired at it with a simple electric blast and the scene created a chain reaction like a Rube Goldberg machine made out of TNT. It was nifty.

And it’ll sure be interesting to see what players come up with when a limited public beta is held in early April. Infamous 2 itself is set for release June 7.

The Game Developers Conference may have started yesterday, but Tuesday is when it really picks up. Today, I’ll be covering mostly EA stuff with a few titles sprinkled in such as MLB 11(11 a.m. PST), inFamous 2 (2 p.m. PST)… Continue Reading →

The Game Developers Conference may have started yesterday, but Tuesday is when it really picks up. Today, I’ll be covering mostly EA stuff with a few titles sprinkled in such as MLB 11(11 a.m. PST), inFamous 2 (2 p.m. PST) and Skullgirls (5:30 p.m.). Check out my Twitter feed below to find updates.